Intimacy and Hawthorne

I' The Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume IX, Number 1, Spring, 1978 Intimacy and Hawthorne kenneth Dauber. Rediscoverinf!. Hawthorne. Princeton: Princeton t:niversity Press, 1977.235 + xu pp. Theodore Colson Kenneth Dauber's Rediscovering Hawthorne starts with an immense promise. Historical-biographicalcriticism and formalistic New Criticism, Dauber says, had notreally touched what excited him most in Hawthorne's work; what had m thatHawthorne's works are "a vehicle to effect intimacy." Dauber begins l\ith Hawthorne's preface to the third edition of Twice-Told Tales which says thatHawthorne's sketches are attempts to "open an intercourse with the l\orld." Dauber proposes to make a new kind of study which will break new ground in thinking about genre. According to him, "critics have divided literature into certain formal categories, genres described structurally or thematically, but with no reference to affectivity. They miss about a work \\hat precisely engages them in it. Worse, they fail to see 'works' that are all around in the interstices of those which they have defined" (p. 228). The book Jacket blurb says that Mr. Dauber "lays the foundation for a new theory ofgenres." Thisseemsexciting and possibly valid. It is true that one who has read the hotly ofan author's work does come to feel some kind of intimacy with that writer, and this is important. And Hawthorne, who was so intensely private and yetwas so concerned with isolation as an ultimate sin, seems an excellent choice to study in this respect. I willtry to summarize Dauber's argument. He conceives of genre as a ' langue which is determined by culture. This genre forces itself on the writer in 1 v.hat Dauber calls "generic pressure." Each work of literature has a pre- 102 Theodore Colson· existence in this genre, and the writer merely transcribes it: we used the term "generic" rather than cultural, say, or social, pressure to describethelimita, tions on a writer's purpose. What the work communicates, at a~y rate, is only whattheco 01 munity, however constituted, assumes from the start. The writer makes manifestwhat. immanent in his world. He writes only to an audience that accepts any message he mayrelatea~ I implicit in the language they share. The work exists in all its detail before it has ever bee; written. It is an invention in both the ordinary and root senses of that word, the wnter:, creation, but, as it were, found. It is speech latent in the literary langue of his audience. 1 115 ; 1 genre, though sui generis, an archetype of which it itself may even be the only instance ' (pp. 22-23) If the writer does not resist "generic pressure," he does not himselfmake· contact with the readers. So, opposed to generic pressure is the author·, purpose. That purpose is "to open an intercourse with the world." I cannot see that Dauber conceives of any other purpose than this "intimacy." Dauber uses as an example Borges' story "Pierre Menard, Author ofthe Quixote." Menard decides to write Don Quixote-not just to copy it.He considers immersing. himself in Cervantes' world, but that would be tobecome I Cervantes. He decides to reach the Quixote through his own experiences,and at his death has produced a couple of chapters that appear to be Cervantes. but are really a new work. This, says Dauber, is how Hawthorne seeks tD achieve intimacy: "The writer, possessed by a work he cannot resist, in possesses it to make it also his own. The work is the expression of a mutualit) It affirms a culture, yet includes the writer as an equal member. It istheground of the intercourse Hawthorne would open with the world, the locus ofsuet intimacy as writing may achieve" (pp. 41-42). Dauber sees Hawthorne'i writing career as a battle of purpose against genre. This battle beginsinthe writing of his tales, is nearly won in Legends of the Province-House, thenlost in "The Artist of the Beautiful." It is taken up again in The Scarlet Letter,which "indeed, stands as Hawthorne's most exemplary work, because it so centralij articulates the method characteristic of his fiction in general" (p. 94).The 1 Scarlet Letter is the prisoner of...